Reading is Working, Honest

A Doorstop of a Book

I had a bit of a hiccup this morning; the first biggy since starting on the tablets a week ago. I had hoped the tablets would help reduce my insomnia, but they seem to have made it worse instead. I’m waking at 2am and 5am every night, unable to close my eyes. In retaliation I’m back to napping as soon as the kids are asleep which only exacerbates the issue.

I woke up fretful and panicked, with palpitations and a strong desire not to have to face the school run. I made it through the chattering and the tears and the “Mummy I’m going to miss you” but by the time I got home I was shattered and most definitely unfit for work.

Add to lack of sleep the presence of hubbie at home on a rare day off and writing just wasn’t going to happen. I find it extremely hard to write with someone else in the house, almost as if I feel guilty that I’m not doing something more productive with my time, like laundry or housework. It stems from childhood and it drives hubbie potty, not least because a lazy day on my part without guilt makes it much easier for him to do the same (not that writing is a lazy day).

Anyway, for a whole host of reasons I decided it was a day for reading. I’m ploughing my way through a doorstop of a fantasy book I found in my old bedroom at my mother’s house – The Curse of the Mistwraith by Janny Wurts. If I’ve read it before I blocked the painful experience from my memory. I’m not sure why it’s gripped me now because it’s a fiendishly difficult read. As opaque in language as The Raven Boys, but lacking Maggie’s poetry and passion, it’s dense and unfathomable but clearly with enough story to maintain my interest. I’ve given up on much easier reads.

The book sprung to mind when I read Rinelle Grey’s recent post on world building in Sci Fi and Fantasy (Is Simple Ever Better? My answer is yes!). The world building in this book is elusive and complicated, but promises unicorns and dragons so appeals to the fairy princess in my soul. And as I curled up in bed reading I suddenly found myself opening my laptop and tapping out 500 difficult words to get me to the next place in Class Act. Clearly just the act of reading can free up words in a muddled mind, connect those pesky twenty-six characters into something with vague meaning.

So, there you go, reading is working if you’re a writer. I have proof. I never need feel guilty again. (Though of course I will. Who wouldn’t feel guilty reading and calling it working for a living?) Next time though I might just choose something easier to read. Like War and Peace.

What’s Your Character’s Love Language?

Do you know your characters’ love languages?

It’s no secret, here on the blog, that I was strongly affected by reading The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, and coming to understand mine and my husband’s particular languages. It has strengthened our relationship and helped us communicate. I’m also now looking at the children and trying to understand how they feel love.

But, being me, I never miss an opportunity to put my life lessons to work on my writing.

Today, at the end of walking the dog – it taking that long for my drugged brain to start working – I turned my mind to the dilemma of my current writer’s block. I’m trying to pen an emotional scene in Class Act, to get my protagonist Rebecca past a difficult experience in her life, without having any direct knowledge of the issue.

I don’t want to belabour the point. Like the postnatal depression in Baby Blues & Wedding Shoes (which I do have experience of), the issues in Rebecca’s past are important for the effect they have on her character and relationships, but I don’t want them forming the be all and end all of the novel. I’m writing genre fiction not literary fiction and aiming for a happy ever after, albeit a plausible one that survives challenges.

So I wondered how I could help Rebecca get through the difficulty most quickly, and whether that could be done genuinely with the right man without it all seeming too convenient and unrealistic. It made me ponder what her Love Language might be and I realised that – for her – the love language has to be Words of Affirmation. Therefore Alex, the love interest, needs to talk to her, reassure her, convince her of his sincerity. I’m not sure what his Love Language is yet. I think his might be Quality Time. That’s the thing lacking from his childhood and the thing he yearned for in his failed relationship at the start of the novel.

I feel as empowered in my writing as I did in my marriage by looking at things this way. I have also realised that I know my characters better than I might give myself credit for. I think I’ll use the five love languages again when considering my romantic protagonists. It’s a new, interesting and simple way to ensure coherent, three-dimensional characters, particularly in the Romance genre.

Just goes to show, you can learn from the strangest of sources. As a friend of mine used to say, “Every day’s a school day.”

Eking Out The Words

Sometimes you have to get down to graft

I finally got back to work on Class Act this week but, my goodness, it’s like pulling teeth. I’m unfortunately at a juncture in the novel where the protagonist is tackling something from her past as her relationship with the male lead hots up.

I didn’t write these scenes the first time through – not deliberately, it just didn’t come out in the first draft. I don’t do sex and I don’t do conflict, and these scenes have both. Only, writing them in my current frame of mind, I feel like I’m trying to make a porcelain tea set using a hammer and chisel.

It’s tempting to delete everything I’ve painfully written this morning – all three hundred measly words – but sometimes you just need something on the page to edit, and move on.

Occasionally you look back and it isn’t as awful as you remember. Mostly, you look back and get out a big fat red pen and fix it. All I know is I’ll never have a manuscript to get to Beta Readers if I don’t push on through. As lovely as it is that I sold 30 copies of Baby Blues and got a new five star review (and it is lovely!) it’s only going to work if I keep writing.

Sometimes the 300 words, eked out one cup of tea at a time, are as important and precious as the three thousand rattled off in good order. They’re all steps up the mountain.

Reasons to Smile

Smiling Knight

The blog has dried up since I started on my SSRI medication. Not only have I spent the last week feeling sick (and now have another bloomin cold. Grrr) I’ve found that I don’t have the constant stream of voices in my head, worrying, analysing, stressing, debating random subjects. I walked the dog yesterday and all I thought about was racing the large rain cloud that was hiding behind the house when I ventured out without a coat. Normally my brain switches into ‘blog-writing mode’ as soon as I start walking. Now? Nothing.

I have wondered whether to force myself to think of something to write, like I did last year when I was keeping up with the daily blogging challenge but, having decided not to worry so much about it this year, it feels foolish to write rubbish just to tick a box.

But today I have something to share. Following on from my free promotion for Baby Blues, I have sold some books. That deserves being in bold: I’ve never sold more than a few books a month since starting on my self-publishing journey. I don’t do enough marketing or work hard enough to get reviews. I know this. In my mind I’ve decided to get three or four books under my belt, pay someone to design me a gorgeous set of matching covers, and then go large on marketing and promotion (as both children will be at school).

So, waking up this morning to have sales of Baby Blues in double-figures over night, to have reached #2794 in PAID ranking on Amazon.co.uk, is like winning the Pulitzer Prize. The book is only £1.54 in the UK – you can’t buy a coffee for that – so it isn’t about the money. The ranking, though? That feels great. I don’t know what happened, whether I made it onto an Amazon email or something, but it shows that visibility is the key.

The writing blogs tell you the importance of spending thousands on structural edits and line edits, but I’m starting to think a decent cover and some marketing is probably a better use of cash! Mind you, when I start getting terrible reviews I might change my mind… For now I’m enjoying my reason to smile.

Celebrating Success and Searching for Motivation

Achieving great rankings

My Baby Blues and Wedding Shoes promotion ended this morning and it couldn’t have gone better. I had around 2,500 downloads and reached some great numbers in terms of ranking:

#8 in the Romance category on Amazon.com

#10 in Contemporary Women’s Fiction on Amazon.com

#39 on overall free downloads for Amazon.co.uk

#15 in Contemporary Romance on Amazon.co.uk

Now I know these numbers don’t mean a great deal. The majority of people who downloaded the book won’t read it, even fewer will leave a review. However to get that many downloads in two days, when the book only has one review in the US and none anywhere else (and virtually no promotion other than a few tweets and status updates) gives a little ray of hope that at least my blurb and front cover are okay (Though hubbie tells me the title makes people think the book is depressing.)

I see free promotions as more of a banner advert, getting my name in front of people who wouldn’t otherwise discover me and my writing, than a way to get new readers. I know myself that I download dozens of books I’ll never read. Time will tell whether it works as a strategy, but if nothing else it’s a nice feeling to see yourself on the first page of the bestsellers! 🙂

Making it on the first page!

It also makes me see the benefit in loading a book up for preorders via Smashwords. If I could sell enough copies in the weeks prior to release, then that splurge of sales on day one of release would do wonders for initial rankings. Of course, I have to finish my next book for that to happen and, boy oh boy, am I struggling. I’m still tired and scattered from the medication, and I just can’t seem to pin myself down to the hard graft of revisions. I know if I’m not careful weeks will turn into months and, like the box of kids’ things waiting for me to sell on ebay, it will become an insurmountable task to get back to work.

I wanted to get my first draft to the editor by Easter, so I could take the two weeks off to clear my mind, ready to work on the revisions when they came back, and give the children my attention during the school holidays. Ho hum, that gives me five weeks to add thirty thousand words and fill all the plot holes AND get it to Beta Readers. Hmmm some mountains are too high. I think it might be that which is freezing my mind. Needing to work around the school holidays is adding a new dynamic to my already-fragile motivation! Oh well, every mountain is climbed one step at a time. I just need to write ten words today and it will be twenty tomorrow.

But first I might walk the dog!

Medicate Me: Day Three

Having a cuddle

Day three since starting on anti-depressants:

My inner thoughts are scattered and harder to get hold of, like troublesome toddlers or helium balloons bobbing just out of reach. Normally while walking the dog I have several conversations running in my mind at once. Today it was just broken and random words.

At night I’m exhausted but can’t sleep. I feel the tiredness but am wide awake as if I have jetlag. This is new. My previous experience of SSRIs is one of endless sleep.

I found it harder to read to my son earlier but that could be the sleep deprivation slurring my words. The dizziness and sickness from day one and two is subsiding slightly but I do seem prone to hot flushes. My brain itches, just beneath the skin. I imagine it’s as frustrating to wear a plaster cast though I have no direct experience. Hubbie – who has history with this drug and is merrily nodding at each new symptom – says the brain itching is new to him. Nice to have something original.

I don’t feel like crying; scrap that, I don’t feel capable of crying. I take this as a good thing although the remoteness of emotions is what has held me off from taking the drugs for so long. All I remember from my last time on anti-depressants was the feeling of living in a bubble, with the world just pretty pictures moving around me. This time I feel rather like I’m underwater, in a cloudy sea with limited visibility. I have to remind myself this is temporary.

I’m still getting cross and frustrated easily with the children but haven’t yelled at them once. That might be because I’m still not working as such – no writing in two weeks and precious little housework. The quietening of the voices in my head makes me worry that I might not be able to write at all, once the drugs have fully taken hold. I have to remember hubbie’s dose is much higher and he’s written two books in recent years.

I do feel anxious and have had the odd palpitation. I seem to be taking it in my stride, largely thanks to hubbie’s support and the fact that I’ve stopped working for a bit. I am strangely reassured by these things as they confirm to me that I wasn’t ready to go through this two years ago. Not with this little impact certainly.

All in all, Day Three and all is well. I’ll keep you posted.

The Perfect School?

Sudbury Valley School

Almost as soon as my nephew was born, my sister began to speak about sending him to a particular school in America. A free school, a democratic school – run by the children for the children. A place where a child could ride their bike or play video games all day, everyday, if they chose.

I scoffed. My parents rolled their eyes. I’m an academic at heart, with straights As and a first class degree and a Masters (we won’t mention the B in A Level General Studies – after all it wasn’t a ‘real’ qualification – it was only about life and that’s not important to a student who wants to succeed.)

Over the years, my brave, courageous, determined sister never let go of her American dream. Her husband’s sister’s children went to the school and her desire grew. I never got it. Three years ago, after untold hours of effort, my sister and her family emigrated to America to live near my brother-in-law’s family, with a view to my nephew and now niece going to the school.

The school run for my sister

I still didn’t get it. School is about learning and classes and exams and school uniform and all that, and my children were going to love it. There were going to be reading and counting to a hundred by the time they were five, they were going to be top of the class. After all, I was, and that made me happy, didn’t it?

My daughter started school six months ago, and my confidence began to waver. School seemed so regimented, especially for these tiny four-year-olds looking so serious and adorable in their smart uniform. The school run was chaotic and emotional and full of stressed parents snapping and snarling (particularly me).

To begin with, my daughter loved it. As suspected, she thrived on learning and was reading and counting to a hundred by her fifth birthday. She loves the community of school, idolises her teacher, and adores singing, reading and PE. But, here’s the thing: after spending a whole year desperate to go to school, my bright, academic, sponge-like learning child doesn’t want to go anymore.

“Mummy why do we only do PE once a week, I love PE.”

“Mummy, I love singing, is it singing assembly today? Is it?”

“Mummy, we didn’t get to do reading today.”

Drumming with his sister (click for video)

Then, yesterday, I watched this video on the Sudbury Valley school my sister has set her heart on. And I cried. Oh my. I want that for my children. I want them to be able to play piano for three hours straight if they choose. I want the calm, majestic, green surroundings, the rocks and the lakes and the books and the teachers there to facilitate enthusiastic learning. I want my children, my artistic children who often spend hours playing in their band, to have that.

Who cares if they meet some government-decided tick box of success. I want them to know what makes them passionate by the time they’re fifteen, not fifty.

Already, in six months, I’ve seen my daughter lose her edge. Become less able to find things to do without direction, become more concerned about breaking rules than having fun. She gets some of that from me, but where did I get it from?

I read a post yesterday written by the talented and successful writer, Kim Bongiorno, who wondered if the fact that she didn’t finish college would affect her own children’s desire and ability to go to college. She wondered whether she was a good enough role model for them. This was my reply (before watching the Sudbury Valley video!)

“I think you are being a better role model by not having finished your college degree. I don’t think university is for everyone. I went to university because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. For people with vocations, like doctors or teachers, of course university is essential. However, if you’re not academic then it’s a way to run up huge debt and be no nearer to a job at the end. Certainly that’s true in the UK.

Fifteen years ago I graduated with a first class degree and it marginally improved my chances of getting a good job. Which I did. But I hated it and had a breakdown after three years. The next job was no better except I lasted five years before realising I don’t handle office stress well and I need to be creative.

And I AM academic, I loved studying. What about the people who don’t learn through lectures and essays? My sister struggled for four years to get a 2:2 in a language she hated, and graduated with massive debt, great pool playing skills and a love of Jack Daniels. Since then she’s started from scratch, building up her own businesses and finding what she loves and is good at.

In fifteen years time, when my daughter would graduate, I suspect a degree won’t be enough to compete. She’ll need a Masters, maybe a PhD. Years more of study and debt, for what? She wants to be a writer like her mummy, my son wants to be a racing driver (he’s three). I truly hope I’ll be strong enough to encourage them in those desires because happy is as important as well paid.

There is a great lecture I watched http://new.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity all about academic inflation and how university is really only good if you want to be a professor. I have long debates and worries about education and making sure it’s right for my children and this lecture consolidated some of them.

If your children want to go to college, the fact that circumstances outside your control prevented you completing your course shouldn’t stop them. And if they don’t want to go, you’ll be the best person to show them that – with hard work and determination – they can be a success without it.”

Daughter drumming – stuff she can’t do at school

This all sounds like I’m upping sticks and moving my family to Boston, doesn’t it? Oh I wish. But I don’t want to live in America, not even for an amazing school. For all my angst and depression, I’ve travelled the world and found myself home. But it does mean I can now say,

“Sister, you are the bravest, smartest, strongest, kick-ass person I know, and well done. Sorry I didn’t always understand.”

And I can keep looking for a better school for my children, and give them space at home to be children. To be themselves and to be happy with that. It’s taken me nearly four decades to achieve it, and I’m only partly there. In the meantime, I hope more schools look to the Sudbury Valley model and at least take some parts of it away. Watch the video and tell me you aren’t just a teeny bit impressed.

My 500th Post and a Giveaway

Wow!

How exciting! WordPress has just informed me that my last post was my 500th post! That’s not bad going in two years.

I wanted to pen a quick line to say thank you to everyone who follows this blog, reads my posts, likes them, comments on them, shares them and generally makes the whole thing worthwhile.

When I started Writermummy two years ago, I didn’t really know what I was doing or what a blog was for. I only knew that if I wanted to sell books I needed an author platform. I’m not sure Kristen Lamb would approve of my blog in that role.

The blog has become my therapist’s couch, my sounding board, my coffee shop where I hang out and chat with friends. My safe place, where I can vent on pretty much any subject and find someone willing to give advice or at least a virtual hug. You guys can’t begin to know what it means to me.

So, it might not help me sell books (it certainly takes time away from writing new ones!), but my blog is my soul. To celebrate reaching my 500th post I’ve decided to offer Baby Blues and Wedding Shoes for free this weekend (even though I said it would never be free!) The promotion should be live around 8am GMT on 1st March. I wish I could offer cake, but that’s a bit more tricky.

Here’s to 500 more posts. Thanks for listening. 🙂

What’s Your Love Language?

My daughter loves quality time

I had a revelation at 6am this morning – when I have most of my epiphanies – to do with the book I’m reading: The Five Love Languages. As I mentioned before, the Five Love Languages – as defined by Gary Chapman – are Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service and Physical Touch.

Chapman argues that, for a relationship to thrive, we must first identify and then learn to speak our partner’s love language. I’ve always assumed my language is Acts of Service. I do the laundry out of love, I cook and clean and make coffee out of love. It has frustrated me beyond measure that my husband doesn’t understand. Not just that he doesn’t do those things himself, but that he doesn’t recognise them as acts of love from me.

Hubbie’s love language is Physical Touch. Not (just) in the obvious male way – Chapman distinguishes between sexual desire and touch as the primary love language. If you have sexual desire, but can take or leave the hugs, hand-holding and incidental moments of day-to-day physical contact, then chances are you have a different primary language.

My son is either touch or quality time

Thinking it through this morning, using the techniques Chapman suggests, I suddenly realised that the Acts of Service may well be learned behaviour from my parents. Chapman recommends thinking back to the time when you and your partner were first dating, to understand the thing about your partner that made you think ‘he’s the one’. Hubbie and I lived apart for the whole of the two years between meeting and getting married. Picking up dirty underpants and cooking rarely figured in our equation. Oh yes, I liked that he cooked, that was a bonus. Who doesn’t love a domesticated man?

But the thing that first snared me, on day one as we chatted online before even meeting, was that he listened. My favourite times in our courtship were the long phone conversations, lying in the dark with just the two of us speaking. No interruptions, no distractions, just voices, sharing, listening. (Well, I assumed he was listening. I did have an ex who confessed years after we broke up that he used to mute the phone and watch TV while I rambled, but at least – even at the tender age of 16 – he realised my need to speak and indulged it.)

All my life I’ve felt that no one really listened to me. As discussed that’s not uncommon. But as I thought it through this morning, I realised that I blossom when I am listened to. I have a good friend who is a listener and I come away from our coffee catch-ups fizzing and smiling and alive (and feeling guilty for being what Chapman calls a ‘Babbling Brook’). Growing up, and even now at least once a month, my family tease me remorselessly for being a chatterbox. I hated it; still do. The endless words were driven inwards, to diaries and inner thoughts (not helping the depression) and now to my blog and my novels. And always I feel guilty for speaking, for hogging the attention, for asking to be heard.

Chapman lists a dialect of Quality Time as ‘Quality Conversation’ which includes quality listening. I was so quick to accuse myself of being a rubbish listener that I missed the point. Being listened to is my primary love language.

Joanne Harris

I went to an author lecture by Joanne Harris last night and came home bubbling with excitement and a need to discuss it. Hubbie paused his TV program but I still felt I was interrupting. I realise now that an act of love – to me – would have been for him to turn off the TV and give me his full attention.

And again, earlier in the evening, I was getting angry and frustrated with my son because he kept interrupting me, endlessly, as only a three-year-old can. And it dawned on me that the yelling I often resort to, that has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, possibly stems from an insatiable need to be heard.

I know my daughter’s language is quality time and I suspect my son’s is too, (although – like his Dad – physical touch is also super important.) Certainly both children talk as much as me and get just as frustrated if they aren’t attended to. That’s tough on hubbie – being in a house with three chatterboxes all vying for airtime. No wonder he switches off and stops listening; it’s probably a self-defence mechanism. However, if we can become a family that hugs and hears, that loves and listens attentively, we might just cut back on the shouting and increase the joy. It’s worth a go.

I told the doctor yesterday, when talking about my depression, that I didn’t need any more therapy; that words didn’t help and the last psychotherapist I saw made it worse. Turns out I just needed to hear (read) the right words. I can’t recommend the book enough and I will always be grateful to the lovely lady who leant it to me.

Depression is an Illness Not a State of Mind

Sometimes sleep isn’t enough

I finally had my doctor’s appointment today to talk about getting some chemical support to help me climb out of the pit of despair I have tumbled into over the last two or three years. I nearly didn’t go. The sun is shining, I had a day off this week (to be ill, but a day off is a day off), the school run went well, I felt in control. I felt great.

I’m not depressed, I decided. Why do I need to go to the doctor, I’m just wasting their time. Then I checked my blog. My low periods have been coming every two to four weeks since I last went to see a GP at the beginning of September last year (when the woman told me to get more sleep ‘for the sake of my family’ grrr) and they’re always followed by a period of revelation when I decide I’m better and as long as I read a certain book, implement a change, recite a mantra every day, I’ll be fine. Hmmm.

So I went.

And as the lovely lady (an understanding GP I saw two years ago, not the one from September) asked me about my life, my routine, why I found the school run so stressful, why I couldn’t just re-organise things, get some help, put my kids in after school club, ignore the dishes, I thought here we go again. And as she picked through all my weaknesses and stress points the carefully constructed bubble I’d put around myself burst and the blackness flowed back in.

I sobbed.

I felt so inadequate giving her all the answers I’ve given myself, as I’ve called myself a failure: I shouldn’t need help; my husband does what he can but he works hard too; my mother has earned her stripes and deserves her retirement; I don’t want a cleaner they create mores stress; I gave up work to do the school run, not to pay someone else to do it.

I cried because nothing was going to change. I was still a failure, and there was no help coming. I would still get angry and yell at the kids, I would still neglect my husband and ignore the dog. I would still feel that I prioritise my writing over being a good parent. My mess was all my fault. My chest tightened, the tears fell and the darkness closed around me.

Flowers from my daughter

Then the GP said, “I agree, you do need medication,” and everything changed. A light shone bright at the end of the tunnel. It isn’t just me. I’m not a failure just because I can’t manage to look after two small children, even with them in childcare or school half the week. I might actually be ill, not crap. And then she talked about different medication options, including the one she prescribed two years ago (I should have taken it then! Ah hindsight, you bitch) and I felt she might actually be able to help.

I was talking last night about the first GP that diagnosed me with depression, fourteen years ago. The man – and I don’t even remember his name – saved my life. He might not have realised it, I certainly didn’t, but that’s what he did. He didn’t suggest I just needed to get a different job or organise my time better or get more sleep. He sat and drew a diagram of the brain on a scrap of paper, he explained about chemical imbalance and the importance of serotonin. He treated me as ill rather than inadequate, poorly not pathetic. He gave me half an hour of his time and my life back.

I accept that depression is hard to diagnose, and that the world is over medicated. I accept that therapy is brilliant and necessary for some people, just as some diabetes can be managed through diet rather than drugs. But Doctors who suggest a few nights sleeping at your mum’s house might fix everything could be doing untold harm.

So I’m glad I went today, I’m grateful for the advice on the blog two weeks ago, encouraging me to go. I might get to the end of six months and nothing will have changed. I’ll still be overwhelmed, angry, a horrible parent teaching my children that shouting is the only form of conflict resolution. I hope not.

As with everything, I’ll keep you posted!